TENNIS MASTERS CUP

November 14, 2005

Kevin Ullyet

THE MODERATOR: Kevin Ullyett and Wayne Black. Questions, please.

KEVIN ULLYETT: Well, if you can't see that it's an endangered species, then you're blind because everyone can see that. There's obviously a lot of stuff going on which says that doubles is an endangered species. There's things going on. They're trying to help it and trying to change the scoring. They're doing everything they can. But for us, the change of scoring is wrong. We hate it; we don't like it. So, I mean, just by judging today, I mean, the doubles match was first match up, the singles players only come in tonight. It wasn't a bad crowd. The people made an effort to come out five hours, six hours before Andre Agassi. I thought that was, you know -- I think doubles is pretty popular, you know, still. And also it helps here that this tournament, the doubles was promoted so well here I think. There's posters everywhere - in the elevators in the hotel, on the streets - and stuff like that. The people had a heads-up; they knew we were coming. Normally we go to tournaments, we get there and there's been nothing before that. They go, "Who's playing? I never heard of them. They're not Agassi, Roddick." They're not going to show up. We're just hoping that there's more promotion in the future.

KEVIN ULLYETT: I mean, it's visual. It's visual. People have to be made aware that the guys are out there. Either we have to hire our own guys to go through and plug the city a couple weeks before the tournament and put all our money together and put some banners up saying that the Bryans are coming, you know, Knowles-Nestor, Black-Ullyett, they're actually coming in two weeks to play here. Little things like that can only help us. I know we don't have profiles like Roddick and Agassi, we understand that. I think just a little bit of heads-up in the cities leading up to the tournaments would help a lot, would raise the profile at least a little bit.

WAYNE BLACK: That's on the table for 2008, huh?

KEVIN ULLYETT: Hmm.

WAYNE BLACK: You know, I'm not sure. I haven't really seen the exact proposal. I'm not sure how it works. But if you say they are forced to play doubles, you know, they have the opportunity to play doubles now as it is. They can get into any tournament they want to either through a wildcard or through their singles ranking.

WAYNE BLACK: Of course it would be good if they were forced to play, you know, a few tournaments. But, you know, I don't know if it's fair on them to have to do that. You know, they've got a tough enough schedule as it is playing singles. It's quite demanding to play singles and doubles in the same week. Five singles matches and five doubles matches is quite a lot of work.

KEVIN ULLYETT: The mindset is totally different nowadays, completely different. You can't go back and compare that, "Oh, back in the '70s we all played doubles." You can't do that.

KEVIN ULLYETT: I don't know. I think it depends what product the ATP want to put forth to the public. Do they want to have it a whole, just tennis, or just an elitist sport of just singles-playing-superstars playing? They must cut the -- make it just a small field of 20 people, just the top 20 who are superstars and everyone knows them. Then they must make the ranking, forget about the top 100, say 20 to 100 in singles as well, because I don't think their profiles are any much different than the doubles guys, to be honest.

KEVIN ULLYETT: Well, it's definitely heading that way. I mean, if you've seen the last five years, if you look at the prize money cuts, the draw sizes, it's been slowly getting, you know, smaller and smaller. We're fighting to change that. If we don't win, if the ATP get their way, there will be a lot of guys without jobs, good tennis players. We are fortunate enough that we've had a good career out of doubles, we've both played some singles. But the young guys like the Bryans, still in their mid 20s, they're dominating, they're No. 1 already. They could have another eight years of really top-class tennis. If that happens in two years, they're going to be sitting, doing nothing with all their talent.

WAYNE BLACK: It's great to be playing here. I mean, it's great to get this recognition. As we said, the fans are unbelievable. We don't travel to too many places where we're recognized like this and we get this much support. The surface is a little slow, which I think personally we prefer a faster court. But it's great for, you know -- it's great to watch tennis out there because there's a lot of rallies, a lot of good points. So I think on the whole, you know, we like it, and we're just going to try and have fun and do our best for the rest of the week.

WAYNE BLACK: I don't think we change too frequently. Probably you see that the lower-ranked players, they change a lot because they struggle to get into the tournaments with the same partner that they want to play with. So, I mean, teams like us, the eight teams here, they've all been playing together the whole year and barely ever change. But, yeah, it's those players mainly that are ranked lower. What was the second part of your question?

WAYNE BLACK: Well, I think it's good to choose someone you're very compatible with, who you get along with. It's usually a person from your same country because you know you got the same background and you get along well together because you've got to spend a lot of time with the person. And obviously your games have got to be comparable as well. Kevin's got a great serve and great net game and, you know, I balance it out with good ground strokes and a good return game. So I think that's how we help each other.

WAYNE BLACK: Thank you.

WAYNE BLACK: Thanks. Yeah, it's great, you know, great to win on your birthday. You know, obviously, I hope we can go all the way here. It's going to be a nice end to my career. I hope it's been -- I've been pretty happy with it so far. My wife is pregnant and she's having a baby in January. I think I'm just a little tired of the traveling now and just want to settle down and become a family man (smiling). But, yeah, even if we win it, I think I won't reconsider.